Imagine what you could be legislating instead

The battle to ban gambling advertising was always going to be a tough one. Like tobacco and alcohol we’re dealing with a highly addictive, and highly lucrative, product that wreaks untold harm across the community. Like tobacco and alcohol, a harm minimisation approach is clearly warranted. And as with tobacco and alcohol, there is a strong evidence base that suggests that banning the advertising of gambling products is a proven means of helping to reduce some of that harm. No one is seriously talking prohibition. But everyone who is serious about harm minimisation is talking about the need for an advertising ban, with the Australian Medical Association spelling it out with a crisp message that ‘a partial ban is no ban at all.’

At the moment we have those nicely formulated little warnings at the end of gambling ads, such as: ‘You win some. You lose more’ and ‘Imagine what you could be buying instead.’ But, clever as these are, no one could argue that they negate the influence of the carefully crafted ads they are tacked onto.

'The strength and diversity of the alliance calling for an gambling ad ban, on the other hand, with signatories to its open letter ranging from former prime minister John Howard to Jess Hill, author of See what you made me do, is testimony to the power of those who seek common ground, even on a temporary basis, as a means of collectively achieving social change.'

We should not be surprised at the persistence of gambling advertising. Aided and abetted by arguments such as the one put forward recently by Bill Shorten (bearing out Keane’s analysis) on the ABC’s Q and A, that ‘We got ourselves in this wicked situation where now some of the free-to-air media need gambling ad revenue ... in order just to stay afloat,’ we are confronted by a federal government that appears to be stubbornly protective of certain private interests while wanting to appear to also be concerned about the harm to the community that is caused by the promotion of those interests. Which is why the federal Labor government supports some restrictions on gambling advertising such as hourly caps, the removal of gambling advertising from children’s television programs and during and around sports broadcasts. Enough to say, ‘look we’re doing something because we care’, without causing too much upset to the beneficiaries of what is essentially a predatory practice.

There was no ambiguity in the findings and recommendations of the late Peta Murphy’s inquiry, which unanimously urged the government to completely ban gambling advertising regardless of the cries that come from the heart of big capital. To the credit of this parliamentary committee, its clear message was that it is time we listened to the cries that come from the heart of the community instead.

As public health experts point out:

 

‘The commercial gambling industry has become one of the most innovative health-harming industries of recent times.... Gambling harms can destroy lives, and the liberalisation of gambling markets partnered with the highly sophisticated products and practices of the commercialised gambling industry means that harm can now occur even more rapidly and at a larger scale. There is ample evidence to show the significant negative health and social consequences of gambling not only for individuals who gamble, but also for families and communities. These include financial difficulties (Marko et al., 2023), family violence (Brambilla et al., 2023), homelessness (Vandenberg et al., 2022), criminality (Binde et al., 2022), psychological distress (Sinclair et al., 2015), comorbidities with substance misuse (Skaal et al., 2016), and suicide (Marionneau and Nikkinen, 2022), as well as disproportional health care utilization and associated economic costs (Cowlishaw and Kessler, 2016).’

 

Given the above, and noting that a recent Grattan Institute Report puts Australia at the top of the global list in terms of gambling losses, at $1635 per adult in 2022, many of us might be at a loss as to why neither side of politics is all that keen to implement the key recommendation of a bipartisan inquiry.

Perhaps there is something deeper at play here, deeper even than the vested interests of the gambling industry and the corporate media. Unlike harmful commodities such as tobacco and alcohol, gambling is arguably more than a commodity. In some ways isn’t gambling the very essence of capitalism, which is premised on the valorisation of risk attached to the investment of capital? In fact, isn’t it one of the favourite justifications for the taking of obscene profits, to the detriment of both workers and consumers, the claim that capitalists have a moral right to a reward for the risk they have taken with ‘their’ capital? The stock market itself is arguably structured like a global casino, where fortunes are made and lost in the blink of an eye. And then, of course, contrary to the cooperative model of mutuality, the insurance industry is now a hugely profitable vehicle for the commodification of risk itself, where we are left with little choice but to effectively bet against ourselves, hoping that we do not need to get a return on our premiums but grateful that the return is there (at least in theory) if we do. This is juxtaposed with the models where individual risk is socialised rather than commodified. Medicare, and other social services, are based not on the premise that you might get a return commensurate with your personal contribution, but rather that you contribute according to your means and take according to your needs, a familiar version of the principle of ‘from each according to their ability and to each according to their need,’ which comes to us from the Acts of the Apostles, and then via Louis Blanc and Karl Marx.

I am certainly not arguing that since everything’s a gamble in the context of the capitalist socio-economic formation, then the industry that is specifically devoted to the promotion of gambling should be let off the hook. Quite the opposite. I am, however, suggesting that our current government’s reluctance to do the right thing is in some ways emblematic of a dogmatic centrist faith in, and naturalisation of, the moral architecture of late capitalism.

Advocates for a ban on gambling advertising, such as Tim Costello, have been unjustly tarred with the prohibitionist brush, an accusation they vigorously deny, not unlike pro-Palestine advocates being promptly demonised as antisemitic or critics of capitalism automatically being called Stalinists.